Lucas Helder was a pretty average guy. A student at the University of Wisconsin–Stout, he may not have gotten all A’s, but he was well-mannered and had a pretty good attitude.
Nobody saw him as a bad kid.
Little did his colleagues know that Helder was planning something big.
During his time at Stout, Helder developed a rather extreme philosophy on life. In his mind, when your body died, your soul was set free. In his words:
“There are no rules out of the body.
The body is a temporary learning experience.
You learn in the body, and play out of the body.”
In order to spread his message, Helder hatched a deadly scheme. By attaching pipe bombs to mailboxes across the country, he hoped to create a ‘smiley face’ on the the United States map.
In total, Helder set 18 bombs over an area of 3200 miles. By the time he was caught, his makeshift explosives had injured six people, four of whom were mail carriers.
In 2004, Helder was deemed incompetent to stand trial and was committed to Minnesota's Federal Medical Center.
